Friends, If life’s purpose is to glorify God, then our proper gauge is our delight, or rather, the deeply personal appreciation of God’s gift: not a payment made on our behalf. See the column below.  Blessings! Bob

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Spirituality Column #853

March 21, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Delightful Gift, Part 2

By Bob Walters

“Delight is what distinguishes a gift from a payment.” – Ephraim Radner, First Things

 Please forgive my continuing presence on this soap box mounted last week regarding the ubiquitous presence – in modern Christian worship and doctrine – of transaction theology that says it is payment, not grace, that frees our souls.

Disagree?  Count the times in a church service – in prayer, singing, homilies, or sermons – that our salvation is somehow tied to Jesus paying a mysterious price.  Our souls were purchased at a price. Jesus paid our debt.  Jesus was punished for our sins.

No one can point to the recipient of the “payment” – Jesus is already God so He’s not paying God, and I’ll lay great trust on God not paying Satan to “free” us – but that’s our modern, earthly, mercantile, unwavering metaphor for the saving wonder of God’s love, grace, and obedience.  God simply picked up the tab by killing himself. We’re on the payroll.

That rankles me every time I hear it and I hear it a lot.  More details on that are available in last week’s opening salvo (852 – Delightful Gift, Part 1). Today I wanted to fill in some blanks, still holding the belief that my delight is the gift of Jesus, not the lingering guilt of forlorn sin and an unrepayable debt I can barely comprehend. 

Love … I understand that.  Grace frees me … in humility.  Obedience? I try.

First blank to fill … who the heck is Ephraim Radner, author of the wonderful aphorism on the top line above? He was born to a Jewish father and lapsed Catholic mother who himself joined the Episcopal Church at age 14 and is now a priest, theologian, professor, writer … and current occupant of The Back Page column – an institution in itself – of my beloved First Things, a conservative Catholic journal of theology and culture.  I read it because 17 years ago, Russ Blowers recommended it.

The Back Page column is usually the toughest thing in the magazine, if you don’t count the theology arguments in the Letters section.  Radner here (March 2023) is analyzing another philosopher, but notes this: “In a created world, delight fuels the energy of our lives and, rightly understood, marks the governing purpose. Every moment or thing of delight is the incarnate articulation of God’s glory.” 

If life’s purpose is to glorify God, then our proper gauge is our delight, or rather, the deeply personal appreciation of God’s gift: not a payment made on our behalf.

Early in my tutelage under Dr. George Bebawi – my friend, mentor, and weekly Bible study teacher at E91 from 2004 through 2017 – he emphasized the laziness of reducing the love of Jesus to a simple idea of “payment,” “purchase,” or “cost.”

Though perhaps useful as analogy and metaphor, they diminish our potential for deep love and relationship with Jesus.  I don’t remember how he said it, but I’d express it as being similar to being friends with someone to whom you owe money.  That debt is always the first thing you think of, not the love or relationship. I’ve had that experience.

Is it a “salvation issue” thinking Jesus paid a price?  Not sure … not my call.  I would say it is a quality-of-this-life and joy-in-the-here-and-now issue.  Did you ever try to pay someone who didn’t want to be paid?  Or, they try to give you your “grace” back and both parties are embarrassed?  Maybe its unintentional and well meaning, or even noble, as in, “I should pay for this.”  I think Jesus tells us, “We should love for this.”

This is why God loves a joyful giver and, I’d add, a delighted receiver. Joy and love don’t keep score, and delight sweetens life.  In Jesus, we needn’t sweat the payroll.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) years ago tried to find the “paid the price” doctrine in scripture and was convinced only that it really and truly is not there.  That’s next week.

 Friends, If the death and resurrection of Jesus – and our salvation – was all such a great “free gift” from God, why are we always talking about it as a payment? Some thoughts.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #852

March 14, 2023

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Delightful Gift, Part 1

By Bob Walters

“Delight is what distinguishes a gift from a payment.” – Ephraim Radner, First Things

It is a Christian no-brainer that our eternal salvation is a gift from God.

We cannot buy salvation.  We cannot earn it or work for it.  We cannot trade for it, debate for it, bargain for it, beg for it, or pay for it.  Heck, before Jesus, humanity didn’t even know to ask for it.  

In the Bible we find the only road to it; we have to “believe” for it: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not of your own doing; it is a gift from God, not a result of works...” (Ephesians 2:8). God’s grace and love save us, through Jesus.

And then, we have to love for it. Jesus commanded, on multiple occasions, to love God and love others.  Paul writes, “… If I have faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” (1 Corinthians 13:2).  Faith, and love … Godly salvation.

The gift of salvation is Christianity 101.  Without faith in Jesus, we are sinners far from God.  With faith in Jesus, we are sinners close to God.  It is a closeness granted to us by the grace of God; we are restored and covered by the righteousness of Jesus. 

We know salvation because there exist in this life – a life of faith in Jesus – the prayerful “heavenly realms” of faith and love that tease and peak and promise relief from our sins, witness the truth of God’s righteousness, and reveal the purpose of Jesus’s life on earth: His mission to restore fallen humanity to our Creator’s Kingdom.

That is the gift: truth in relationship with Jesus and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit now, and grace and salvation in the assurance of God’s love eternally.  It is a gift; we know it.  The Bible never says “pay for it.”  The Bible never punishes us for it.

But that brings up the points – P Points – that are today’s bullseye: purchase, price, payment, and punishment as they regard our faith, salvation, and Jesus’s mission. Salvation is an expression of God’s love; yet we regularly make it a profaned expression of earthly, consumerist transaction in monetary or punitive terms.

How? Well, even though we would all agree it is a free gift and by grace, listen to how salvation is constantly characterized and marketed in churches, sermons, hymns, and virtually all modern and therapeutic Christian theology: “Jesus purchased us.” “Jesus paid a price for us.”  “Jesus paid our debt.”  “Jesus was punished for our sins.”

Really?  Find any of those specific things in the Bible. As general metaphors they work because our modern culture – commercial, moral, judicial – is based on all value requiring payment, and all wrongs requiring restitution.  But that’s not grace; it’s a picture of guilt-ridden, “get-even” transaction that interrupts God’s work of love and faith.

Grace isn’t Jesus “paying a price”; grace is Jesus loving us and obeying God.

Punished?  Crucifixion was a punishment, yes, but Jesus was murdered by those who hated what He said about God’s grace.  Jesus’ death opened our door to heaven. 

If humans understand the loving work of Jesus as only a “paid” transaction, you can be sure humans will try to keep score … on their own judgmental human terms.  No way will that equate to the divine justice of God’s Book of Life or mercy seat of heaven.

My advice?  Delight in the Lord’s grace and live with joy, neither measuring a mythical payment plan nor fearing punishment.  The difference is eternal.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) will fill in some blanks next week.  For now: prove him wrong.

Spirituality Column #804

April 12, 2022

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Infinite Possibilities

By Bob Walters

“Now there are also many other things that Jesus did.  Were every one of them to be written, I suppose the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” – John 21:25, the final verse of the Fourth Gospel.

During Holy Week our Christian thoughts are focused on the singularly great work of Christ: His death on the Cross.

What did Jesus do?  He died for my sins; He paid the price for my salvation.

And then what happened?  Jesus was resurrected from the tomb – celebrated in Christianity as Easter or Resurrection Day – proving His promise that with faith in Him sins were forgiven, trespasses were covered, that a groaning universe could stop groaning, and that our life eternal in restored relationship with God in Heaven was set.

Jesus survived death for all eternity.  Now, so will we.  Hallelujah!

But … sadly, narrowly, and – let me suggest – joylessly, for far too many souls in the world, including many lightly confessing Christians, that’s where Sunday School adjourns until next year: “Jesus paid the price for my sins. I’m saved.  Now, let’s worry about something else.”  In other words, “I’ll do what I want; it’s paid for.”  Uh … no.

Yes, Jesus provided a Cosmic one-two punch to Satan’s reign of evil on Earth, and even those of the lightest faith in Christ can recite that story.  But that story, big as it is, is often missing true relationship with Jesus and appreciation for His infinite works.

Jesus is Lord of the seen and unseen; nothing was made without Him.  The “seen” we can sense, but the “unseen” is as big as the universe and as small as an atom; it is the unseen component of love, relationship, turmoil, peace, and works of Jesus.  That’s how far “beyond definition” Christ is.  The work of His love can never be contained in a cost equation of some finite “price being paid” for all He did.

John makes it sound like there is a whole lot more to it than that if “the whole world” could not contain the written record of Christ’s work.  Oh my … so much more.

Let’s not minimize the accomplishment of “death and resurrection.” But neither should we limit our Christian attentions to Holy Week’s miraculous but reportable story, nor should we imagine we can quantify anything about the infinite works of Christ.

Paul writes (Romans 5:15-20) that we can gauge and quantify our own trespasses, but we cannot quantify God’s grace or forgiveness (v15): “[God’s] gift is not like the trespass.”  The Bible throughout, in fact, assures that we really cannot fathom many things about God’s Kingdom and Christ, whether it is time (Psalm 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8), money (Matthew 18:24-25), love (Ephesians 3:17-21, esp. v18), grace (Romans 5:15-20, 2 Cor. 12:9), mercy (Ephesian 2:4), patience (2 Peter 3:9), forgiveness (Matthew 7:22), kindness (Ephesians 2:7), or even God’s creativity (Genesis 22:17).

Yes, we can count on God’s love, but there is no way we can do the math.  We benefit when we spend more time searching our hearts and minds for faith and truth in Jesus and less time trying to work out the equation of what Jesus paid for my sins.

Jesus did more than we can imagine, and He did it with infinite love, not money. When our faith connects us to that relationship with Jesus, our possibilities are endless.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) prays for the peace of God and faith in Christ to be your constant companion during this Holy Week … and always.